CHANGE IS HARD Helping Kids Learn to Cope
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kcparent.com december 2021
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ho likes change? I think it’s safe to say the majority of people do not. The problem is we live in a rapidly changing world. Jobs, family, location, relationships—all of it changes all the time. I joke a lot that I roll with the punches, but in all reality, I’m a planner. I like to know what’s going on and how to do it, so I can control as much as possible. Kids do not have the luxury of control. Most times they are dragged along for the ride regardless of whether they want to be. But the reality is kids are still humans. They still have experiences, feelings, emotions, reactions—and they can absolutely be in their own heads. Having the skills to cope with those changes at an earlier age is something they would benefit from. We may think kids are too young to be bothered by change or that they’ll be fine because they are resilient. Maybe. But what would it look like if we took initiative and taught them skills to cope with change, so they can develop that muscle early and be able to use it as they grow? This way, when they have confronted change, they’ll have a toolbox of coping mechanisms and know to put them to use. Let’s go through some strategies: I’ve found talking through an event before it happens to be very helpful. Weeks or days before my kids started school, daycare or sports I would talk about what would happen. That way, they could start to understand that something different was going to happen and be a new normal. They would know that they were going to leave me for an extended period of time and be under someone else’s direction. When my kids started sports, I explained what they needed to do. Going to a doctor appointment? The physician and nurse are going to use their tools on you, and you’re going to go in this big machine. This strategy has helped me a lot in framing change or new experiences as positive things—regardless of whether they actually were. Help kids develop the skills of anticipating what will happen but being ready to adapt if things change. Take the opportunity to talk about some situations that might become more difficult and go through how they might handle things when they need to be independent. This preparation mindset helps when they go to first sleepovers, start high school or college or get into challenging situations and circumstances. Another strategy is the formation of habits. Part of being human is making habits—they may be good, or they may be bad, and we do it a lot without being aware. I remember doing something with my kids and thinking, “Oh, it will be fine this once.” The next thing I knew, it had happened far more than once—and it wasn’t something I wanted to keep happening. We also form bad habits when it comes to dealing with difficult things in life. We tend to do unproductive things when we’ve had a bad day, a bad fight or a negative life event, and our brains resort to finding something to numb the
